Flight Training - July 2019 - 16

PREFLIGHT FLIGHT LESSON

BY MATHIEU THIBAULT

DISTRACTION REACTION
TOO MUCH TALKING LEADS TO TOW BAR DESTRUCTION

WHAT HAPPENED

The damage was done.
The propeller was
bent and needed to be
replaced.

HERE IS THE STORY OF HOW I TOTALED THE PROPEL-

16  FLIGHT TRAINING JULY 2019

PROP STRIKE

BENT OUT
OF SHAPE
Ground strikes may
damage more than just
the propeller tip
How much damage can
a propeller strike do if
the airplane wasn't even
moving? According to
Lycoming, a sudden
engine stop or ground
strike can overstress the
crankshaft gear dowel
or connecting rod bolts.
The first can lead to total
power loss; the latter
"allows the connecting
rod to get loose and flail
inside of the engine causing a nasty failure with a
serious fire potential."

Lycoming says, "the
only safe procedure
is to remove and
disassemble the
engine and completely inspect the
reciprocating and
rotating parts."

MATHIEU THIBAULT is an engineer and private

pilot who lives in Quebec, Canada.

LEFT: SARAH HANSON; ABOVE: STEVE KARP

ler on my Piper PA-28-180.
I'd flown a lot lately as I was supposed to take
my commercial pilot certificate checkride in my
PA-28 the week after this incident happened. I'd
flown more than 130 hours in the past two months,
most of them on a cross-country trip in February
from Montreal to Los Angeles to Miami and back to
Montreal. I now have 230 hours total time. All to say
that I consider myself a capable pilot for the limited
number of hours I have. So how can something so
stupid still happen?
I did my regular preflight inspection inside the
hangar and everything looked good, so I opened the
hangar door. As I pulled the airplane out from the
hangar, a guy waved at me telling me to come see
him. I had flown the day before and this guy had
noticed that I hadn't properly locked the hangar door
on my way out (we had just moved into this new
hangar). He had a rushed looked in his gestures, so I
dropped the tow bar and immediately went toward
him. I bet you can already see where this is going.
He showed me how to properly lock the hangar
door and we then talked for about 30 minutes about
our passion, general aviation. After our little talk, I
walked outside confident that my airplane was ready
to go, since I had already done a thorough preflight
inspection inside the hangar. So, I got in my airplane

and started the engine following my
regular checklist. Bam! Bam! Bam! Immediately, I realized something was wrong
and turned the magnetos to Off-the tow
bar was still attached to the nosewheel.
The damage was done. The propeller
was bent and needed to be replaced. The
engine needed to be taken out and fully
inspected. The good news was that this
happened on the ground, there were no
injuries, and my insurance covered the
cost. But wow, what a hard lesson to swallow. I think I've replayed the sequence
of events in my head 10 million times. At
least I can say that I'm a better pilot today
than I was before the incident.
Here are my main lessons learned:
Always do one final walk-around
before getting into the cockpit-even if the
preflight inspection was just completed-
especially as I had left the airplane out
of my sight. I will add to my checklist a
big-picture walkaround to see if anything
obvious was missed such as a tiedown or
pitot tube cover.
When distractions during key parts
of getting the airplane ready for flight do
happen (I use the word "when" because
I believe distractions are inevitable, no
matter how hard we try to control the
situation), I need to finish what I'm
doing before putting my mind elsewhere.
I should have taken the tow bar and
stored it inside the baggage box before
heading inside.
And the most obvious one-if my
hands aren't on the tow bar, it shouldn't
be attached to the airplane.
Flight Training - July 2019

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Flight Training - July 2019
